


no footnotes, no exceptions

by watfordbird33



Series: soft quiet moments [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 01:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10294145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watfordbird33/pseuds/watfordbird33
Summary: "You're a hero," Chirrut says, and it's a touch, it's a benediction--a pet name, it's love in the purest form.





	

Baze is in the fresher, washing blood off himself. It’s his blood and Hutt blood and Stormtrooper blood and he can’t tell any of it apart except the Hutt blood, because that looks like congealed mud on his shoulders and chest.

He calls to Chirrut for a washcloth.

“Get yourself a washcloth!”

“I can’t--I’ll stain the floor.”

There are padding footsteps and then Chirrut’s head appears around the corner of the curtain. He’s grinning a wolfish grin even though he can’t see exactly how the water trickles down the broad bronze planes of Baze’s chest.

“Give me the cloth and get out of here,” Baze says.

“The blood’s not gone. I can smell it.”

“I know.”

“So let me help you.”

He’s already naked and his slender limbs are on full display as he climbs into the fresher and faces Baze. The water reaches only his feet and the half-hard jut of his cock.

Baze closes his eyes.

“You’re a hero,” Chirrut says, and it’s a touch, it’s a benediction--a pet name, it’s love in the purest form.

“I’m not.”

“ _Bena le; ke’nel._ Hero.”

And Chirrut washes him. Gently. His collarbones and biceps and the places where the blood has collected, where the wounds have scabbed over. His ribs and ams and the line his stomach makes down into his hips.

“You are one with the Force.”

“I’m not.”

Chirrut’s voice doesn’t falter. “And the Force is with you.”

Baze gives up. He braces himself with an arm against the wall and lets Chirrut wash his pelvis, his buttocks, his strong thighs and his calves and his feet where Hutt blood has dried in between the toes.

“Kiss me,” Baze says, when he’s done, and Chirrut does.

The whole slim length of him, and the water, and Baze has the sense like something’s falling. Like something’s got to break.

But still he doesn’t know where they’ll be, two years from now, when Jyn and Cassian die on a beach in light and Baze and Chirrut are gunned-down (heroes) and there’s no memory of this silence except that vague, aching remembrance of how it used to be, before.

No footnotes. No exceptions.

And yet:

They hold each other close against the wall of the fresher until the water’s gone nearly cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Halfway through this, Chirrut calls Baze something in another language. I don't know what he calls him--I made up the language. It just sounded good. So you can insert whatever pet name you want there.
> 
> Also, I know this is super-short. It was originally part of a longer nonlinear narrative, but I realized it did much better as a oneshot. I may post part of the longer narrative at some point, too.


End file.
